Guest MINDSETTER™ Wendy Lawton: Providence is the Tale of Two Cities
Friday, June 06, 2014
Providence has two tales. You know them.
One is all Creative Capital and lively experiment. Providence is a pretty, gritty playground for designers and chefs, entrepreneurs and students. There’s close proximity to New York and Boston – without the price and pretense. Feels like Pittsburgh, tastes like Brooklyn.
The other story is dark and dyspeptic. This Providence is petty and provincial. It can’t see past the next election – or the Connecticut border. Taxes are excessive, red tape is rampant, corruption incorrigible. Forget the schools. Providence can’t even get the potholes right.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTI’ve told both tales in my 10 years in town. Depending on my personal circumstance and the City Hall headlines, I’ve been a cheerleader and a grump. The trouble is, neither tale of Providence is entirely true. Providence isn’t perfect – and it isn’t broken. It’s an awful place that’s gotten an awful lot better. With one major exception, it’s making progress.
Significant progress, for certain, since the bad old 1970s, when downtown was home to not much more than parking lots, railroad tracks, abandoned storefronts, and the world’s widest concrete bridge. Thanks to visionary leaders, the Capital Center era ushered in a shopping mall, a convention center, a performing arts center, three hotels, 300 luxury apartments, 9,000 spaces of garage parking, and 2 million square feet of office space. BAM! Renaissance City.
But the progress I’m talking about is recent, and still being made.
Progress
In the 10 years I’ve lived in Providence, the city has gotten smarter. It’s more strategic, more collaborative, more vibrant. Consider a few important trends:
- Art, design, and culture as an economic engine: The Creative Capital rebrand set the table for the next wave – recognition of the city’s creative sector as an economic force. Thanks to the Department of Art, Culture + Tourism and RI Citizens for the Arts, there is data that proves the financial potency of the city’s creative businesses. A 2012 Citizens for the Arts report showed a 52 percent increase in the number of creative industry businesses since 2007, including 460 new businesses and 770 new jobs between 2011 and 2012 alone. That data generated strong advocacy, which this year landed a $35 million art and culture bond in Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s proposed state budget.
- More government-academic-corporate teamwork: Grumble all you want about town-gown relations, but the city’s six colleges and universities stepped up with their checkbooks when the threat of bankruptcy loomed back in 2011. And higher ed honchos – and the business community – are increasingly active civic partners, providing research, strategy, seed funds, and more to strengthen downtown, grow business, and improve the schools. Together, these public-private leaders created the “Knowledge Economy” – and gave it legs. Major players include the Rhode Island Foundation, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Rhode Island.
- Birth and growth of the start-up scene: A decade ago, Providence wasn’t even on the start-up map. Thanks to tech accelerator Betaspring and do-good venture incubator Social Enterprise Greenhouse, it is. With a big pin. These two organizations in just five years have launched 125 companies that attracted well over $40 million in follow-on funding. More than that, they’ve created a community of entrepreneurs – over 200 business mentors and a slew of social events and support services – and fueled a spirit of innovation now permanently spliced into the city’s DNA. Kudos to the now-defunct Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship for providing critical early juice to the cause.
- Game-changing real estate development: If Capital Center gave Providence the amenities that decent cities need – think convention center – recent development projects have given the city signature soul. Cornish Associates, along with the Providence Foundation and the Providence Revolving Fund, revived Westminster Street and made it the place to parade, party, shop, dine, dance…and watch an outdoor movie. We got The Dean, a bang-up boutique hotel, the Arcade, a handsome revival of the nation’s oldest mall, and the Box Office, America’s largest shipping container building. On tap: A major Kennedy Plaza upgrade and the I-195 redevelopment project, which will remake 19 prime downtown acres.
- More respectable, and responsive, city government: Mayors David Cicilline and Angel Taveras made City Hall more effective and accountable. In the last decade, we got departments for the arts and economic development, the award-winning Providence After School Alliance, and a community policing effort that led to a major drop in crime. In December, permitting moved online to speed development. And a few veils have lifted. Thanks to Common Cause and citizen activists – and City Council progressives – government meeting notices and minutes are available online, as well as critical documents and datasets on the budget, tax rates, and pension issues. City Hall is still a pain, but it works smarter and cleaner than it did a decade ago.
Much work needs to be done. But this progress is real. And it should be celebrated. Providence is a better place than it was a decade ago. And these trends, if they continue, will create lasting change for Providence. Leveraging assets, working across sectors, and creating a culture of integrity in government is critical for all vital cities.
Providence, however, has not made progress in one essential area – public education. City schools continue to fail our kids.
Public Schools
Rhode Island Department of Education statistics show that in Providence Public Schools, less than half of elementary and middle school students meet benchmarks in reading – and less than 40 percent meet them in math. In Providence high schools in 2013, only 61 percent met reading and 24 percent met math standards. High schools don’t even meet the modest 74 percent graduation target rate set by the state. In Providence, only 65 percent of students graduate in four years – and only 72 percent graduate in six.
The factors driving this failure are many, and they are complex. One problem is leadership. Providence has had three superintendents in the last 10 years. Another problem is attendance. In 2012, nearly a third of Providence students missed 18 or more days of school. Teachers aren’t showing up, either. A new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality shows than in 2012, 47 percent of city teachers were frequently or chronically absent – with 23 percent missing 18 or more days. This gives Providence schools the distinction of being among the worst in the nation for teacher attendance.
This sub-par performance is inexcusable for moral reasons – and economic ones. Businesses won’t move here, or grow here, if employees can’t put their kids in good public schools. It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s education. That is the economy.
There is hope. The city’s Children and Youth Cabinet is tackling chronic student absenteeism, and the United Providence! initiative is, for the first time, bringing together the teacher’s union with the district administration to turn around the city’s most struggling schools. And the Learning Community, the high-performing Central Falls charter, has a built-in consultancy that is spreading road-tested, teacher-driven practices to boost achievement to Woonsocket and Smithfield schools. Providence could be next.
There is also hope – at the ballot box. In Providence, the mayor holds significant sway over the schools. The mayor appoints members of the school board, and, with the city council, builds the school budget. The next mayor can – and should – be a key driver of school improvement. So candidates can – and should – have a clear vision for improving teaching and learning. Ask them. And vote.
But hope lies not only in present efforts, and in a future mayor. It lies in past achievement. The city that paved over its rivers also uncovered them – and built a vibrant downtown. And in the last decade, the city is crafting a more creative, entrepreneurial, collaborative, and transparent culture to activate that downtown. Rhode Island even reformed its pension system – another “intractable” problem that, well, proved otherwise.
After 10 years, I am leaving Providence. And yes, it’s largely due to the schools. But I believe Providence can improve public education. It will require strong public and private sector leadership, and sustained citizen engagement. It will demand vision and grit. We’ve got all that. So keep making progress, Providence, this time, for the kids.
Related Slideshow: The Most and Least Diverse High Schools in Rhode Island
The data below reflects the 2012-13 academic year as provided by the Rhode Island Dept of Education. Values have been rounded to the nearest whole percent.
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